


A Father's Blessing

by misstriplem



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games), Red Dead Redemption 2
Genre: Arthur Morgan Does Not Have Tuberculosis, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:47:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24489991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misstriplem/pseuds/misstriplem
Summary: A tale in which your and Arthur Morgan's daughter, Annie, must find a way to tell her father she's getting married...to Jack Marston.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan & Female Reader, Jack Marston & Original Female Character(s), Papa Arthur Morgan - Relationship
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	A Father's Blessing

The girl understood that conversing with her father was a matter only reserved for the brave.

It wasn’t that he was an unreasonable man, she thought as she headed through the dusty field toward the barn. There were certainly moments when reason escaped him, to be sure, but he was by far and away more astute than most gave him credit for. The look in his eyes was sharp with cutting clarity, the sort that promised a swift, enacting sense of deliverance should there be even a hint of deception.

She sighed and ran a hand along the length of her chestnut hair. The girl had left it unbound for the occasion of the day and her heart still buzzed whenever she considered it. A smile crept unbidden to her lips and a rush of sweet, endearing adrenaline swept through her veins. Her steps picked up their pace as she traversed the path to the barn with an eager, quickened jaunt.

All she had to do was tell her father.

Her steps slowed a bit as she considered how she might tell him. He appreciated candor, though she knew from the stories her mother had told her that he’d spent a majority of his life as a liar and a cheat. He insisted he was past all that now, though the girl had caught him bending the truth on more than one occasion (particularly when he’d done something to inadvertently upset her mother). There was a certain element of verity tinged with veiled deceit about his often sarcastic nature and, while she’d long since learned how to navigate this rather thorny aspect of her father, the girl found it a matter neigh insurmountable in the moments leading up to the confrontation she’d dreaded all afternoon.

It wasn’t easy being the daughter of Arthur Morgan.

It was even harder being the daughter of Arthur Morgan who’d only hours ago become engaged to Jack Marston.

Rhiannon Elizabeth Morgan—or Annie, as she was fondly called by her parents and the hands that worked Morgan Ranch—tried her best to recall the innate courage housed somewhere in the depths of her turbulent heart. Dust clung to her boots as she meandered toward the barn, which became all the more imposing the closer she came to it. If she listened closely, she was sure she’d be able to hear her father barking orders at the ranch hands or talking sweetly to the mares and stallions he pampered and showered with praise. Her mother had often said that Arthur Morgan understood horses far more than he did people, a fact which time had proven true to the Morgans only daughter.

Annie glanced around the ranch. Her little brother, Thomas John Morgan (or Tommy, as their mother insisted on calling him. His middle name had come from Jack’s father, though Arthur had flatly insisted to the contrary anytime someone asked him), was likely off in the pastures, tending to the cattle. He, like their father, catered more toward the silent, unconditional understanding of animals rather than the disapproving, judgmental world of men.

Annie bolstered her strength and lifted her chin as she set her mind to what needed to be done. It would be far easier without Tommy’s presence; he tended to stick his nose where it didn’t belong and was often quick with his tongue and less forthcoming with reason. He was, as their mother often said, very much his father’s son. Annie’s heart staggered wildly in her chest as she reached the open barn doors. She paused just outside the threshold, keeping to one side as she peered into the blessedly cool shadows within.

The faint but audible sound of a brush along a horse’s hide drifted toward her. Annie leaned against the door and listened, waiting for the sound she knew would come next.

“That’s it,” Arthur Morgan cooed in his deep, humming baritone. “You’re a good girl. Nearly done, now.”

Annie smiled despite the sheer terror threatening to overwhelm her. Some of her earliest and fondest memories where crafted in this very barn as her father taught her the finer points of caring for horses. To the Morgans, horses were far more than working beasts; they were family, in more ways than they could properly describe, and deserved to be treated as such.

The smile faded a bit. She took a steadying breath, pushed away from the door, and stepped into the barn before her nerves failed.

Arthur didn’t look up as he brushed his favorite mare, Guinevere. Annie clenched her hands at her sides, let out a shaking a breath, and called out, “Daddy?”

Her father looked up. Arthur greeted her with a wide, adoring grin, one he reserved just for her.

“Sweetheart,” he said with a certain measure of surprise. He patted Guinevere’s neck and placed the brush with the other supplies on the stall wall. “What you up to?”

Annie tried to quell the pattering of her rapid-fire heart. “Oh, nothing, really,” she said with a stilted chuckle. She took her father’s proffered hand as he gave it a gentle squeeze and kissed her on the cheek. She swallowed and smoothed the folds of her skirt. “I, uh, just got back in. From town, I mean.”

She cringed at her own words. Annie prided herself on being articulate but every word she conjured felt clumsy and useless in her mouth.

Arthur headed toward the far wall as he nodded toward her. “Thought you was looking dressed up,” he mused as he hefted the pitchfork off the rack of other, larger ranching supplies. “What was you doing in town?”

Annie tucked her hair behind her ears. She damned the frizzing strands; the Ambarino weather had taken a turn toward ruthless humidity in the last few days. She wrung her hands and glanced toward the horses. Some of them glanced her way; her own mare, Nimue, seemed to eye her with a distinct expression that said, _Good luck_.

“I was with Jack,” she said carefully, watching her father for signs of trouble. “He wanted to take me into Valentine.”

Arthur stiffened. The pitchfork paused in midair before he turned to face her, his expression carefully blank. “Did he, now?”

She knew enough of her father to know when she was treading on thin ice. Annie watched as Arthur began to muck the stalls, his lips pressed into a thin line as he kept his gaze firmly off his daughter.

This wasn’t going to end well.

It was _never_ going to end well.

But there was nothing for it. Annie hadn’t gotten dressed up in her mother’s old clothes (they both hated skirts, but Annie had known that the trip into Valentine was more than just an outing with her beau) and relinquished her poor, unsightly hair to the humidity to be daunted by her father.

Besides, he adored her, and she him; Annie had never hidden anything from her father (except the one time she tossed her brother into the pond) and she wasn’t about to start now, not when her future lay in the balance.

“Daddy,” Annie began, instilling as much firmness in her tone as she could muster, “Jack asked me to marry him and I said yes.”

The pitchfork scraped against the floor of the barn. Its echo pervaded the space until only brittle, furious silence fell into place. Annie watched as her father froze, his hands tight on the handle of the pitchfork, as her heart leapt in her chest.

A moment passed, then another.

It was only when her father had been unmoving and entirely silent for longer than it took her to utter the damned words that Annie truly began to worry.

*

Arthur Morgan stared at the pitchfork.

It was a bit rusted at the tips and the handle was well worn, but it had served him well thus far. It was steady and Arthur craved steadiness, particularly in the years since his children had been born and the ranch had finally made a name for itself. He’d had next to nothing when he bought the place, but he’d been used to making do with what little he had. But the birth of his daughter and, a few years later, his son, had instilled within Arthur Morgan the drive to leave the remnants of the outlaw behind and embrace the frightening yet rewarding tenants of fatherhood.

John Marston had been the one to give him the pitchfork, along with much of the other equipment that lined the walls of the barn. He’d had more than enough to go around at Beecher’s Hope and, after Arthur had purchased the ranch when his wife was pregnant with Annie, had displayed a rare act of kindness in donating said equipment to his former brother in arms.

It was a bit rusted, Arthur knew, but the points were still sharp.

And he was going to use it to kill John Marston and, if he deemed it necessary, Jack Marston.

*

You sat at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee cupped between your hands. Exhaustion plagued you; it’d been a difficult night, what with preparing Annie for her outing with Jack. She’d fussed nearly the entire evening, both over what to wear and what to say.

You’d both known what the trip to Valentine meant—you’d known since Annie was a little girl that she was enamored with Jack Marston, who’d taken to her the moment he met her. He’d spent the next several years visiting every chance he got, whether or not he had his parents in tow. Annie had done the same, though you couldn’t begin to count the times she’d denied that there was anything more between them than true, undaunted friendship.

It wasn’t until your daughter had nearly stumbled through the door one night after seeing the Marstons off during one of their visits that you noted the distinct change: rosy cheeks, bright eyes, and a smile that could only come when one’s heart was unburdened with fear of the unknown. Jack had kissed her, you found out later that night, and Annie was undeniably, irrevocably sure that she would want no other man’s kiss than Jack Marston’s for as long as she lived.

Your husband, on the other hand, had flatly refused to hear anything at all on the matter of young Jack. Despite having known the boy since he was born, Arthur was entirely unwilling to believe that Jack and Annie might one day have a future together. He was still affectionate with Jack, but lately you’d come to notice the cool, detached affect that marred their interactions.

You sipped your coffee and let your gaze wander to the door. Annie had begged and pleaded for you to be the one who broke the news to Arthur; she’d been scared, and rightly so, but in the end you’d convinced her that it would be far worse coming from you than it would coming from her. Arthur adored his daughter; he’d been in love with her since the moment he first laid eyes on her, and in his eyes, she could do no wrong.

Jack, on the other hand…

You frowned and tapped your fingers on the table. Your eyes slid to the backdoor as you waited for what you knew would inevitably come next. Arthur hadn’t expected you to be happy that Annie had fallen for Jack; in fact, you were abundantly sure that he’d expected you to be as silently furious as he was. He’d wanted you to rail against the idea of his little girl growing up, finding love, and eventually having a family of her own. The prospect was entirely abhorrent to Arthur, who still so often spoke of his daughter as though she were only a little girl, still clutching her father’s hand as he taught her right from wrong.

Maybe the conversation had gone quite as poorly as you’d anticipated, you considered. Maybe Arthur had understood how important Jack was to his daughter and—

You started as the door flew open. Arthur Morgan stood in the threshold, his hand clutching a pitchfork as his rage-filled gaze swept the room and finally landed on you.

“Y/N!” he roared, his lips pulled back in a snarl.

You sighed. _So much for hope_ , you thought wryly as you wrapped your hands around your mug. “Yes, dear?”

“Don’t give me that crap, woman,” he hissed as his grip tightened on the farming equipment. “Did you know about this?”

A quick glance over your husband’s broad shoulders revealed your daughter running up the path to the house. “Daddy,” she shouted breathlessly, “Please, just wait a minute!”

Arthur said nothing; he kept his eyes firmly on you as his chest heaved from the effort of containing his terrible, sweeping rage.

You closed your eyes and braced yourself. “Arthur—”

He slammed the butt of the pitchfork into the floor with a resounding thud. “You knew,” he snarled angrily as he took a few tentative, angry steps into the house. “You _knew_ about this and didn’t tell me?”

You raised your eyebrow. “I wonder why.”

Annie burst through the door and wrapped her arms around her father’s torso. “Daddy,” she pleaded, her face wrought with desperation. “Will you just listen for a minute?”

The anger in his face faded only a fraction at the sight and touch of his daughter. He pulled her arms carefully away from him as he looked at her, his face a mask of anger that only barely covered the world of hurt and panic you knew was budding beneath the surface.

Arthur steeled his expression and said sternly, “The answer is no. Go to your room.”

Annie’s brow furrowed in consternation. “Daddy, I’m not a child.”

“I said go to your room. Now!” he barked as Annie turned a cool, angry glare at him before loudly stomping off toward her room.

You watched Annie leave, your heart straining painfully at the look on her face. She’d known how difficult this would be, as did you; but it was one thing to imagine the event and another thing entirely to live it, to feel the animosity that flooded from Arthur even as the desperate desire for happiness still lingered in the distraught, pained expression you’d caught on her face.

“Well,” you said tersely as you turned a sour look toward your husband. “That could’ve gone better.”

Arthur ran a hand over his face. “She ain’t marrying him, Y/N,” he said with a deliberate shake of his head. “I won’t allow it.”

You pushed your mug away. “Why?”

His expression turned incredulous. “ _Why_? What you mean, why?” He threw a hand toward her room and added rather forcefully, “She’s too damn young, for one. And where the hell does _that boy_ get off thinking he can ask her something like _that_ without my permission?”

You sighed and placed your chin in her hand. This required a bit of tact and patience and, unfortunately for your husband, you were fresh out of both. “And what would your answer have been if Jack had asked you first?”

Arthur’s mouth twitched into a grimace. “No.”

“A wonder, then,” you drawled sarcastically, “why he chose to ask the woman he loves over her angry, bull-headed father.”

For a moment, Arthur looked affronted before allowing his anger to return in full force. “She ain’t a woman,” he countered. “She’s my daughter.”

“ _Our_ daughter,” you corrected. “Or are you forgetting the many grueling hours I spent giving birth to her so you could just go and break her heart on one of the most important days of her life?”

It was blunt but to the point; you’d prepared the words long before this moment, choosing each one carefully and bolstering your heart against the inevitable effect they would have on your husband. But there was only one way to get through to him, and that was to carve straight through the veneer of ire and into the heart you knew lay beating beneath.

The anger faded almost instantly from Arthur’s face. Sharp panic and penetrating distress flooded his face as your words took root and threatened to send him into a downward spiral of hurt. You rose from your seat and went to him. His eyes lingered on the doorway through which Annie had disappeared, his face written with the unimaginable pain of a father who might have truly and unintentionally broken his daughter’s heart. You placed a hand on Arthur’s stubbled cheek and turned his face to yours.

“She loves him, Arthur,” you said softly and carefully. “What’s more, Jack loves her—he has since they were children.”

He said nothing. The hurt and self-hatred were still there, lingering just beneath the surface of his summer eyes. You brushed your thumb along the top of his cheek and pressed a gentle, quick kiss to his lips.

You whispered, “Go talk to her.”

Arthur looked down at you. He asked in a strangled voice, “What do I say?”

You smiled and replied, “I have a feeling you’ll know exactly what to say.” You glanced over at the pitchfork and frowned. “Why do you have that?”

Arthur glanced at the equipment as though it had just occurred to him that he held it. He looked away and muttered, “I was gonna use it.”

“For what?”

“To kill John,” he admitted in defeat.

You rolled your eyes and shoved him toward the door at the same time you relinquished the pitchfork from his grip. “Go and talk to your daughter, you unimaginable fool.”

*

There was one thing of which Arthur Morgan was abundantly certain: He did not want his daughter to get married.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want her to be happy—far from it, in fact. Arthur had only ever done and said whatever it took to bring a smile to his little girl’s face. The few times he’d seen her cry had nearly torn his blackened heart from his chest, and he’d sworn each time that he would protect her from whatever it was that sought to cause her pain. But this time he couldn’t; this time, he’d been the one to cause her pain.

Arthur paused outside Annie’s bedroom door, feeling far more useless and distraught than he had in as long as he could remember. His chest tightened the more he considered what he’d said to her; his thoughts turned dark, each one more painful than the last, until finally a single, terrible realization settled upon him.

He was a terrible father.

If he’d been a better man in life, than maybe he would have been happy for his only daughter. If he’d been a better man, than he would have congratulated her on marrying the only man he trusted to take care of his girl, to see to her needs as though he’d been born to do little else but that. But Arthur Morgan had never been much of a man and even less of a father; he’d hoped his wife had given him a second chance to prove himself, to embrace the love he’d stoked in his heart in the moments he’d chosen to leave the gang and see John to safety in the process. Instead, all he’d done was make a goddamned mess of things.

Arthur swallowed his self-pity and knocked on the door.

There was no response.

“Annie?” he called out cautiously. “Sweetheart, can I come in?”

Again, he heard no response.

Jack had asked Annie to marry him, he pondered as he stared at the door in resolute silence. He wasn’t sure what upset him more—the fact that the boy he’d known all these years had somehow taken it upon himself to fall in love with his daughter, or that Annie had gone and done the same.

When had she grown up? Had Arthur not been paying attention all these years as she grew taller and smarter and more worldly that he could ever hope to be? Had he been stumbling about the ranch with his eyes closed as she took on responsibilities she’d once been too young to do on her own, as she cared for her younger brother and taught him all that Arthur had taught her in her youth?

Arthur’s heart staggered in his brittle, constricted chest. He didn’t like this—didn’t like the fact that his daughter was grown and able to make her own decisions, didn’t like that she was intent on getting married and starting her own family.

It felt far too much like Jack Marston was trying to steal away his little girl.

Arthur wrenched open the door, suddenly desperate to see Annie. His daughter lay stretched out on her bed, a book propped on her folded legs, her eyes watching him with a mixture of trepidation and resentment. She looked so very like her mother in that moment that Arthur was sure his heart would burst at the sight.

Somehow, he managed to find his voice. “Sweetheart,” he said softly, the word hardly more than a rasp, “you mind if we talk for a minute?” He gestured between the both of them before talking half a step toward the bed.

Annie pulled in a sharp breath and lowered her book. “I guess,” she said stiffly.

Arthur nodded and carefully sat on the end of the bed. He scratched absently at the back of his head and sighed. He’d never had much of a way with words, as he’d so aptly proven only moments before. But there had to be way for him to salvage what he’d very nearly shattered.

He looked at his daughter and said, “I’m sorry,” he admitted. “It weren’t right of me to speak to you the way I did.”

Annie kept silent but the sternness in her gaze softened just a fraction. Arthur pushed away the thoughts that reminded him of losing her and pressed on, digging up the words he knew needed to be said.

“I ain’t going to pretend to be happy about…well,” he said as he tossed a hand up in the air. “But it ain’t because I don’t want _you_ to be happy.”

Annie looked down at her book. “I know, Daddy.”

He still remembered the first time he’d laid eyes on his daughter. He remembered her first laugh, her first words; his journals were filled with his likeness of her, though Arthur had always known that his drawings fell woefully short of capturing his Annie’s beauty. She was pure and innocent, a child born of outlaws but kept free of her own accord. Somehow, somewhere, Arthur had done something to deserve being her father. He would never know what it was, but he knew he would spend the rest of his life making sure he was worthy of the title—and he supposed now was as good a time as any to try.

Arthur reached out and clasped her hand in his. He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, a gesture he’d done a thousand times before. Annie’s fingers wrapped tightly around his hand and Arthur finally allowed himself to breathe.

He looked her in the eye and asked, “Do you love him?”

Tears glazed the intoxicating blue-green tint of Annie’s eyes. “Yes,” she said without wavering.

Arthur had been afraid of that. He steeled himself against the rallying pain and urge to refute the admission. He squeezed her hand and inquired, “Does he make you happy?”

A smile teased at the corner of Annie’s lips. “Very much.”

Arthur sighed and shook his head. “Then I guess I ain’t got much choice in the matter, do I?”

Annie tightened her grip on her father’s hand and shoved the book off her chest and onto the bed. She swung her legs over the side until she sat beside her father. “What are you saying?”

She was really going to make him utter the words, then. Arthur dragged them up from deep in the recesses of his heart, turned them over, and weighed their consequences. If he said what he knew he needed to say, then she wouldn’t be his little girl anymore. Not really, anyway—she’d belong to someone else, and Arthur would be reduced to nothing more than an old, ornery bystander, forever lamenting the loss of his beloved little girl as she carried on with her life. He would be nothing more than an afterthought, a passing memory that faded with time.

But of one thing Arthur Morgan was abundantly sure: It was entirely worth it if it meant Annie would be happy.

“I’m saying,” he uttered slowly and with some difficulty, “that you can marry Jack, as long as that’s what you want.”

Annie stared at him, wide-eyed with wonder and shock. Then, before Arthur had a chance to question his decision, she threw her arms around his neck. There was little else Arthur could do but hold his daughter close. For some reason, he felt as though these moments were numbered, and the very thought sent him spiraling into a darkness he wasn’t sure he would ever come out of. But then Annie kissed his cheek and pulled away, her hands dipping to his and holding them tightly. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she beamed at her father, her happiness infectious and perfect.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she murmured around her tears. “He wanted to ask you first, but—”

“Yeah, I know,” Arthur muttered. He glanced sharply at his daughter and added pointedly, “But you tell that boy that I ain’t giving him my blessing until he comes to me himself.”

Annie laughed and blotted her tears with the heel of her hand. “And do I have your blessing, Daddy?”

Arthur reached out and cupped his daughter’s face with his hands. He pressed a kiss to her forehead and wiped away the lingering traces of her tears. Even after all this time, she could still take his breath away with a single smile. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for his daughter; whatever she asked for, he would give.

Even if it meant giving her away to Jack Marston.

“You always have,” he replied as he pulled her in close. “And you always will.”


End file.
